To buzz or to influence?
While scrolling through social media feeds, we see the words “buzzer” and “influencer” too many times. Although these two words are often used in similar contexts, there is the question of whether they are interchangeable or essentially different.
During the rise of Omnibus Law protests in 2020, representatives of the Presidential Staff Office said that they did not use buzzer services, but only social media influencers, to endorse the bill. This statement indicated that the two are not the same. So, what makes them different?
A social media influencer is an individual who can influence those who follow them on social media based on the relationship established between them and their followers. This relationship requires real personal presence, as influencers brand themselves as role models to their followers in order to gain power and trust from them.
On the other hand, buzzers often work anonymously and are organised by agents. They are called buzzers because they buzz about a certain issue in a definite time frame simultaneously. It goes without saying that buzzers only surface when there is an issue to buzz about.
While influencer has a more neutral image, buzzer is often associated with negative things, such as hoaxes, manipulations and fake accounts.
Buzzer existed in the first place because of the market mechanism: when there is demand, there is supply. Social media is proven to be an essential tool in marketing and branding because it is a place where public opinion can be formed.
Center for Innovation Policy and Governance (CIPG) conducted a research about the origin of the buzzer phenomenon and found that buzzer was born along with the birth of Twitter in 2009. It initially developed into a marketing strategy to promote products in order to increase sales. This can be linked to buzz marketing, an idea to market something by word of mouth. In this idea, it is important that people are having a good perception towards the product or brand.
To understand the motive behind buzzer service users, TFR interviewed J, a 23-year-old female living in Jakarta, who used to work in a political agency and often hired buzzer and influencer services to push the agenda of her clients, mainly through social media.
“During the 2019 presidential election, I often hosted many fancy dinners for Twitter buzzers. We gathered to formulate strategies to spread the words about campaigns held by a candidate who targeted urban youths in Jakarta,” said J.
She developed a weekly editorial plan for the buzzer agents so they could make the materials go viral. The payments varied for each agent, depending on how their work went. “We monitored every agent and their bots, we made an analysis based on the key performance indicators we had specified. Each member of the agents could earn Rp300,000 to Rp600,000 per month.”
Beside fake accounts behind the buzzer agents, J also used influencer services for her clients. “One of my clients was Ministry of Coordination and they wanted to push some bills. I hired two influencers; one was an anonymous account with a deity nuance as their persona, the other was a well-known social media justice warrior on Twitter. We did make a brief about the bills and how we wanted them to be delivered, but we expected them to do it with their own words. The former’s rate was Rp500,000 per tweet, whereas the latter was Rp200,000 less because he had less followers.”
According to J, the success of buzzers’ work was difficult to measure even with specified indicators. “Although the results cannot be quantified, we kept using their services because in general we saw people were really affected by their followings. The echo-chamber algorithm of social media was proven to be working.”
However, not every political support is organised and bought. Some of them can be organic from influencers. Take, for example, Pandji Pragiwaksono when he supported Anies Baswedan in the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election against Basuki Tjahaja Poernama and Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono. Pandji endorsed Anies by putting in good words about him on his social media posts. Another example is medical activist and influencer Dr. Tirta who openly supported Joko Widodo in his 2019 candidacy on social media.
What differentiates support from influencers and the one tailored by buzzers is that influencers can be held accountable for every statement they made because they are real person. Buzzers, on the other hand, are hard to track because they use burner accounts. That is why buzzers often spread fake news and propaganda in spite of the ITE Law that regulates social media usage and prohibits the spread of false information.
Instagram user @opposite78910 spread false information about the General Elections Commission’s vote counting system was cheated in the 2019 presidential election. The information was proven to be false, but the fire was already burning on social media where people began to speculate how the election was not held fairly.
The buzzer work can be harmful considering Indonesia’s low digital literacy. With all the false information and propaganda roaming around the internet, it is hard to filter the truth. Such narratives also often provoke chaos outside social media. For instance, the blasphemy case involving Basuki Tjahaja Poernama during one of his campaigns was edited and spread through social media, igniting what is now called the 212 movement.
In this modern era, we cannot avoid using social media because everything is digitalised. Therefore, it is important to minimise the negative impacts by wisely sorting information we find on social media, whether it comes from influencers or buzzers.